


the learned and authentic fellows

by isawet



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:49:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystique and Hank, post-First Class. For two people on opposite sides of what's developing into a mutant civil war they run into each other an awful lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the learned and authentic fellows

Raven itches when she changes. It’s a prickle just under her skin, all along her bones, and when she ripples back to her true form she almost shudders with relief. Her palms sweat when she enters her old passcode into the keypad at the gate, and when it beeps and swings open she shifts into Alex, running unfamiliar fingers through coarse blonde hair. 

“Hey Professor,” she says lightly, and Charles looks up from his desk. There are lines around his eyes she doesn’t remember. “How are you feeling?” she asks, and tries to remember the way Alex had talked, the way his face moved and the cadence of his voice. Charles takes a sip of his tea, and Raven can smell the honey in it.

Charles says something empty and reassuring, and Raven watches the light of his lamp glint off the metal of his chair.

“Are you happy, Raven?” he asks, and she ripples, the feeling of fingernails scraping every inch of her skin in the most delightful way. 

“Erik’s fine,” she says, and tries to remember the last time they talked to each other instead of past each other.

 

There’s a toffee chocolate bar melting in her hand, and she slips into the lab and rattles her fingernail across glass beakers. The floor creaks when Hank shuffles forward, and his toenails click on the tile.

“What are you doing here,” he rasps.

“I brought you this,” she says, and hates the way her voice goes soft, like a schoolgirl. Hank tries to take the candy from her hand and it makes a wet squelch as it goes flat in his hand. Hank stares at his hand for a long moment, and then sweeps his arm across the bench, sending a wave of glass crashing into the wall. The shattered pieces tinkle as they fall, and Raven can’t help her gasp as she jumps.

“Hank-” she says, and he bares his teeth at her, his face twisted and alien. 

“Get out,” he snarls, and she does.

 

Raven kills for the first time outside a dive bar in a tiny Mississippi town, out to recruit a schoolteacher with reptile eyes. They find her on a Sunday in a field, slumped on a cross, and Raven’s vision goes red and shaky. The next time she’s thinking clearly she’s sitting astride one of the men, his eyes staring sightlessly up at her, clouded with death. Someone grabs her, pulls her to the car, and she presses her face against the cold glass of the window and closes her eyes, the church bells ringing in her ears. Her throat burns with bile and she swallows hard, concentrating on the rumble of the engines through her seat and the whispers of the girl with the slit-green eyes _thank you_.

 

“Drop her off somewhere,” Erik says dismissively, “her talent is minor.”

 

Raven takes her car, the beat up hatchback Volkswagon that coughs when she presses on the accelerator too fast and squeals when she brakes. It takes them two days to get to Westchester, and the girl never speaks, sitting slumped in the backseat with bandages like mittens wrapped thick around her hands.

“He’ll take care of you,” she tells the schoolteacher at the gates, and wonders what her name is. Raven watches the girl shuffle up the walk, hunched in on herself, hair limp over her face, and sees a blue figure at the second story window. She hesitates, then lifts a hand in greeting. She can’t tell if he waves back at her.

 

Killing comes much easier after that

 

Raven wanders away from Erik at the first genetic conference, bored by the speeches and the powerpoint presentations and Erik’s fidgeting at being without his helmet. She wanders the convention center and smoothes her palms over the pencil skirt she’s wearing, runs a finger around the conservative bun she’s twisted her hair into. The strap of her bag digs into her shoulder uncomfortably, and the clothes feel rough on her skin. She frowns and shrugs her bag off her shoulder for a moment, rolling her back and stretching.

“Raven,” Hank says from behind her. He’s wearing a suit that fits well over his broad shoulders, and his hair is slicked back the same way it was when they were young. Raven looks down to cover a smile--he’s still wearing the same glasses he used to.

“Is Charles here?” she asks pointlessly--he’s practically headlining the event. Hank inclines his head slightly, and Raven thinks he looks distinguished in his age.

“You’ve changed,” she says quietly, looking him over more closely. There’s a scar through his eyebrow that wasn’t there before.

“You haven’t,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her appearance, just as young as when they first met. Raven smirks.

“I have my indulgences,” she says airily, and when he smiles he ducks his head the way she remembers. Her cell phone vibrates against her hip and she smiles a sharp smile. 

“A pleasure,” Hank says, and Raven puts a little extra pop in the swing of her hips as she leaves, another indulgence.

 

Raven gets a package in the mail, one of the PO boxes Erik has set up, a dark brown leather shoulderbag, the one she’d left behind at the conference. There’s a blue hair on the strap, and a note tucked into the front zipper pocket in a tidy scrawl. 

“Shakespeare,” Erik says, and his lips twist a little, “how very droll.”

Raven tucks the paper into the crease of her mirror, the steam from her shower making the ink go vague and fuzzy _The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together._

 

The next time Raven sees Hank he throws a car door at her and she has to twist sideways into a wall, grunting with pain and hissing in anger. She ducks down the hallway at a flat sprint, and she can hear the crashing of him behind her, the way that he bounds instead of runs. She dives through an open window on her right, fitting neatly in the space between the pane and the wall, and scrambles for the lab freezer.

There’s a snarl from behind her, a rough angry guttural sound, and Raven feels bits of plaster and glass glance off her back as Hank comes through the wall. The handle of the freezer scrapes her palm as she flings it open and Hank’s hand closes around her hip at the same moment she wraps her fingers around the test tubes, painfully cold against her skin. When he yanks her backwards, her neck jerks as her spine wrenches, and she barely notes the crash of the tubes on the ground, some government lackey’s backwards engineered version of Hank’s serum dripping red orange on the tiled floor.

Raven picks herself off the floor, and she and Hank stare down at the mess on the floor. 

“Huh.” Raven says, and Hank tries to get his breathing back under control.

“Well,” Hank says calmly, but his fists are clenched and his teeth are showing. There’s a crashing in the distance, and shouting. Raven can feel the slickness of blood on her leg, and there’s a rip in the torso of Hank’s uniform, black with a bright yellow belt, a yellow x inscribed over his heart. Raven remembers the feel of custom made leather on her skin, butter soft and the smell of it, wafting up from her high collar. Her spine hurts where Hank threw her into the wall.

“That’s what we wanted,” Hank says, toeing the glass on the floor,”I don’t want to fight you,” he says tiredly, “not today.” Raven shifts on her feet, and touches the tip of her finger to her hair, thick and stiff. She thinks that Hank’s fur is probably smooth and soft, like expensive bedsheets and plush velvet. The edges of Emma’s mind tickle behind Raven’s eyes, and the test tube she’d curled against her body and turned away from Hank’s sight is cold in the small of her back. 

Raven thinks about asking him to come with her, thinks about going back with him, Charles and her chair in the library, the one that she dragged into the corner by the window with the hummingbird nest outside, the way Hank’s skin had flushed after a run.

“Another day, then,” Mystique says, and slips out the window lightning fast, smiling as she heads for Emma.


End file.
